The brochure was presented at Zagreb’s Cultural and Information Centre (KIC), and it covers the results of the five year period of MEDIA Desk Croatia’s activities, between 2008 and 2013.

'Excellent five is brave title, but a well-deserved one, since it refers to 3.3 million Euro – i.e. the support for 17 Croatian films, 5 Croatian film festivals, digitisation of 4 Croatian cinemas, co-financing 11 cinemas within the Europa Cinemas network, and a large number of supports granted as automatic and selective support of European film in Croatia', said Martina Petrović, director at Creative Europe Desk – MEDIA Office, about the first five years of work.

'I came to congratulate on the first successful five years, because these five years are backed by five years of systematic everyday work. We watched something created out of nothing, a numerical sequence out of thin air, something being built from scratch. It took certain effort to get ahead of this video game imposed by the MEDIA Programme’s administration, but on the other hand it proved that this effort was not as incredible as sceptics thought', said Hrvoje Hribar, Head of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.

In the 2008-2013 period, Croatian projects and beneficiaries drew 3.3 million Euro in the following categories: support for producers (€ 517,742), festivals (€ 575,310), networking and cinema digitisation (€ 427,264), automatic and selective distribution (€ 1.348,502), continuous training (€ 48,000), and training scholarships for Croatian beneficiaries (€ 383,182). In the same period Croatia financially participated in the MEDIA Programme with 730,381 Euro.

In the producers category, an incredible success story was written by Ankica Jurić Tilić with Kinorama, who got grants in the slate funding category for four films at the same time (The Mysterious Boy, The Reaper and Green Dog), followed by Studio Dim, a record holder in the number of supported individual projects (Night Boats, Trampoline and My Grandpa Is an Alien), and the highest individual project development sum went to Helena Bulaja for Mechanical Figures/Inspired by Tesla (€ 60,000). One special success was continuous training support, granted to ZagrebDox Pro, the first such Croatian project to be backed by MEDIA.

Also, the data on the amounts drawn in 2014 through the MEDIA Sub-programme was presented – Croatian beneficiaries earned 531,424 Euro of non-returnable funds. Interestingly, that year, at the second deadline for individual project development, Croatia scored the same result as United Kingdom, since it was granted funds for four films, said Petrović.

Some of the projects that were backed in 2014 were presented to the Zagreb audience: the feature fiction film Nosila je rubac črleni, produced by Nina Petrović with Švenk and Danijel Pek with Antitalent produkcija, the TV fiction-animated serial for children Pričaj mi, pričam ti, produced by Darija Kulenović Gudan and Marina Andree Škop with Studio Dim, and the documentary film In Search of a Lost Country, directed by Marija Ratković Vidaković and produced by Barbara Jukopila and Vera Robić-Škarica with the Croatian Film Clubs’ Association.

Last year the support was also granted to Croatian beneficiaries as partners in the audience development programme: the project Operation Cinema was presented by Ena Rahelić from Sarajevo Film Festival, and Cinema Mediterranean, part of the namesake project, was presented by Alen Munitić from the Mediterranean Film Festival Split, Sergej Stanojkovski from Avvantura Film Forum presented Eye to Eye, Marina Burić with Restart presented the project KineDok, and Sandra Maričić with HRT Academy presented Fred@School.

More information on the results and the MEDIA Sub-programme is available at www.mediadesk.hr.

High resolution photographs are available on this link; all photos by Nina Đurđević.

Title photos: Martina Petrović; Hrvoje Hribar; audience at the presentation; Čista petica/Excellent five brochure